Day 18-20: Bundi — IndefinitelyOOO

helens lovely face.jpg — *"He passes the stick to us like a baton"*

Bundi is admittedly a bit off the beaten track and not yet that much of a feature of many tourist’s trails. So that coupled with the prospect of seeing where might have inspired a few chapters of The Jungle Book was reason enough for the detour.

Bundi is tiny in comparison to many of our stops to date but across the two days we spent here I think at least half of its population must have said hello to us. Not 'hello can I show you my silver/silk/massage skills' - just hello and a smile.

Taragarh fort is hewn into the hillside the town crouches at the bottom of - with its ramparts creeping all the way to its peak, the setting for a Saturday afternoon walk to be remembered.

Bundi boasts some of the finest examples of Rajput art in Rajasthan and as we wander around the palace and gardens with barely a handful of other people, it feels quite unjustly ignored. The place is clearly in a state of some decrepitude and whilst this definitely adds quite a lot to our experience - the romance that we’re discovering something few other eyes have looked upon - there’s also a concern that in 50 years the still bright turquoises, reds and blues won’t be there to see.

In its day the fort was renowned for its tunnels - now inaccessible to visitors and actually, more curiously, fairly inaccessible to past rulers... It's said that there's a labyrinth of catacombs (Chitrashala) in which the state treasures are believed to have been stored. Each ruler was allowed one visit but when the last guide died in the 1940s the secret of its location was lost! How exciting.

As we approach the path to the fort we see a man with a big stick on the way back down. He passes the stick to us like a baton - “is it terribly steep we ask”, “a little yes, but this is for the monkeys” Ah, ok...

The monkeys guard the pathway in like the worst wedding guard of honour ever. Teeth are bared for a moment during which time my second thoughts arrive and then thankfully depart because the 40 minute stride to the top was worth the momentary monkey agro.

I’ll let the picture gallery below do the talking, but I will admit to singing the Rocky theme (out loud) as we made our final eye popping ascent.

Dinner was spent by the lake enjoying some of the best and cheapest food we’ve eaten. The smells eminating from the kitchen were so saliva inducing that I asked if I could pop into the kitchen for a quick look. Our host was also the chef for the evening, not a regular occurrence he informed us but his wife, the head chef usually, had gone to visit his sister upon the birth of a new son. He didn’t let the side down though! He told me he was frying the spices and making the gravy for our cashew nut curry from scratch (unlike other nameless places...) and my goodness was it worth his efforts. As we were his only guests he pulled up a chair next to us for a post prandial chat - where we learnt about his family, heard about the long time lack of rain and his recent journeying to the south of India - including recommendations we’ll take up ourselves.

As it went Kipling didn’t feature that much - although we dutifully visited a pavilion he stayed a night in and Jacko is half way through Kim... Bundi does rather well on its own.

Every city, town and village we've visited in Rajasthan has been unique, with its own specific attractions, flavour and vibe. In that vein, I can confidently say that Bundi is the friendliest place we've visited. Small-ish and unfussy, a bit tatty but attractive in its own way, it was an ideal place to relax, recharge and say goodbye to Rajasthan before revisiting Delhi and points north.

Bundi's architectural and historic charms are a little forgotten and faded but no less impressive for that. Highlights include the many stepwells so essential for a town that has suffered its share of drought in the past. Of these, the Dhabhai Kund was a remarkable surprise. Barely signposted and hidden behind the bazaar, you have to go looking to find it. Unusually, there were no attendant staff or signage explaining its history so we weren't able to learn too much about the place except what we could see - and what we could see played tricks on the eyes. The well is an enormous inverted pyramid, with steps zigzagging this way and that down every side, creating symmetrical fractal patterns that bring to mind M.C.Escher.

Bundi is seemingly beneath the notice of Rajasthan's busy Department Of Archaology & Museums so its monuments are quite uncared for and there's no better example than the Taragarh Fort. A formidable 40 minute uphill walk up a steep incline, the ancient paving long deteriorated, brings you to the remains of what must have been a very impressive fort. Now it has been entirely reclaimed by the jungle and is garrisoned only by monkeys. With no other visitors around we were left to ourselves to strike out through the trees looking for the ruined bastions and gatehouses whose battlements poke out through the leafy canopy. Climbing crumbling stairs to collapsing ramparts, watched with suspicion by the resident macaques, it's easy to see how Bundi inspired Kipling to write The Jungle Book.

*Ruined fortresses peep out of the jungle*

If Bundi's neglected monuments are charming, its people are more so. Stopped every few paces for a hello and quick chat or offer of chai with locals, we quickly shook off the cynicism we've built up expecting every greeting to be followed with a sales pitch. Here people genuinely just want to say hi. It's refreshing (though a little exhausting in its own way.) One friendly passerby cheerfully reminded us that being a tourist means more than "walking in straight lines, looking only ahead" and we have tried to take that to heart, slowing down and enjoying the opportunity for conversation and a bit of mutual understanding.

There's not too much going on in Bundi and that seems to be how the locals like it. We liked it too